Digital database to track tigers soon

With real time information available through observation of tigers fitted with satellite collars, GPS collars and radio VHF collars, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) is for the first time creating a system for a central database on tiger movement and analysis.

The aim is to track tigers, monitor source population, movement patterns and also empower forest guards (who have so far recorded tiger movements in paper files) to make inputs into the centralised software.

Over the past two years, tigers have been fitted with different collars in a bid to understand their habitat better, most famously in the July-August translocation of a tiger pair from Ranthambore to Sariska, where the animals were fitted and tracked with a satellite collar.

However, there has been no software to collate or analyse the data centrally. Earlier, tiger numbers were estimated through pugmarks of different animals. However, in the latest tiger census released this year, the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) used camera trapping to estimate tiger numbers.

“We will create a prescribed format where day-to-day monitoring can take place, which will also help in all-India tiger estimation. If I ask a forest guard where a tiger is, he should be able to tell me the movements of the animal. We will be able to thus create an identity sign for each tiger,” he says.

Currently, WII makes use of different types of collars on tigers to study them in different terrains. Currently, 10 tigers in Kanha, two in Sariska and one in the Sunderbans are fitted with satellite collars.

Tigers in Pench and Ranthambhore are fitted with Very High Frequency (VHF) radio collars, while two tigers in Ranthambore have GPS (Global Positioning System) collars.

The number is likely to increase, with NTCA roping in different NGOs to collar more tigers. More camera traps, depending on terrain, will be set up.

“We are increasingly making use of technology to help us understand tigers better. Through this kind of monitoring (through collars) we can ascertain how many litters a tigress can give, age-sex dispersal over landscapes. The move to create and collate nationalised systems of data will give us a much broader perspective,” says Qamar Qureshi, senior scientist from WII who has been involved in many tiger collaring projects.

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